The Mumbai-based company is targeting to enrol at least 10 lakh customers every quarter from now on, such that no village or family would remain financially excluded, eventually. FINO’s biometric smart card has ushered in ‘the next big revolution’ in the rural banking and finance sector, says its Chief Financial Officer and President, Mr Rishi Gupta.

In an interview over phone to Business Line, Mr Gupta said the company was working with the Andhra Pradesh Government in five different districts. “The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) guarantees employment for the unemployed in the rural areas for 100 days in a year through works such as building roads, improving water supply and works that are necessary to improve the infrastructure in rural areas.

“Before we came into the picture, the payment of wages to these workers was either through banks or post office accounts and the disbursements invariably would take at least two weeks. We have resolved this by collecting the job card details from the Gram Panchayat or Mandal and issuing the biometric smart card to the persons enrolled under the NREGA scheme.

“Once the Gram Panchayat furnishes the wage-due details, it is uploaded on to the machine. Besides shortening the waiting time by a week, the smart card enables the card holder to withdraw cash by swiping the card and without waiting in long queues at the bank or post office counters,” he explained.

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The Economic Times

The move will represent the first serious foray by a pure-play BPO firm into ‘platform-based BPO services’, business processes that are run on a unified technology platform owned by the vendor rather than on separate client platforms.

The subject of platform-based BPO has been slightly controversial with IT firms favouring it because of their natural bias towards building and owning technology and a few pure-play BPO firms opposing it.

Total income over the first quarter came in at 3.570 billion euros, up from 2.924 billion year-on-year.

EBITDA rose to 1.231 billion euros from 1.189 billion in the same period a year ago.

Analysts had pegged sales in the range 3.447 billion euros to 3.637 billion, and EBITDA in the range 1.222 billion euros to 1.257 billion.

Net profit amounted to 334 million euros, from 313 million in the same period a year earlier, with earnings per share of 0.19 euros from 0.16 euros.

Analysts saw net profit of 354 million euros to 405 million.

The company said the integration of its ICT services and corporate solutions units with Getronics was on track and will be completed by January 1, 2009.

Sales at Getronics were 515 million euros over the period. Rabo Securities saw sales of 510 million euros.

At the company’s German mobile operator E-Plus, sales came in at 755 million euros, ahead of Rabo’s forecast 702 million euros.

The Dutch telecom company maintained its previous guidance of full-year capex of around 2 billion euros, with free cash flow of at least 2.4 billion euros.

At the company’s operations in the Netherlands, revenues were 2.594 billion euros, up from 2.062 billion. The company said 980 million euros of this came from its consumer operations, while 795 million euros were generated from business operations.

The company said its previously announced 1 billion euros share buy back still has 700 million euros outstanding, and will begin again from April 29.

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Consolidated revenues from operations for the first quarter rose to Rs 79.88 crore (Rs 59.36 crore).

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According to ESC, an autonomous body under the Indian Ministry of Communications and IT, Indian IT exports are growing at more than 30% annually and are expected to cross $50 billion this year and touch $100 billion by 2012.

“IT exports from India to the Middle East, particularly to the UAE, have increased substantially in recent years. We see huge potential for further growth as ESC is devising new strategies to expand its market-share in the region,” ESC regional director for the Middle East and UAE Kamal Vachani said.

The tender offer, announced on June 11, 2007 was finalised after IBM obtained acceptance from 98.7 per cent of stock ownership in Telelogic as well as satisfaction of other conditions of the offer, including necessary worldwide regulatory approvals, an IMB release said.

According to Ken King, Vice-President and Telelogic Integration Executive, IBM software company, “with the acquisition closure, Telelogic now becomes an `IBM’ company’.

“The integrated product and technology road map will illustrate incremental value to our systesm IT customers across Telelogic and Rational. India has a unique advantage with this acquisition as we gain not just from the business perspective also from the strong skill-set that Telelogic has here”, he said.

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Eventually, it turned out to be a case of a storm in a tea cup. A Wipro official confirmed that PR Chandrasekar, president, Americas and Europe, had resigned, but no other executives had quit “An internal announcement about his resignation was made on Monday,” the official said in response to a query by ET.

Mr Chandrasekar has spent close to eight years in Wipro, having joined the firm from General Electric, where he was director, business development, for India. The other well-known name to have joined Wipro from GE and then quit was Vivek Paul. Mr Paul was head of GE’s global CT scanner business when Wipro picked him up.

During the day, however, a leading business television channel reported market talk that four key executives of Wipro were quitting, which in turn fuelled speculation about many more senior officials, including the head of Wipro BPO, TK Kurien, and Sudip Nandy, who heads the telecom business under the new structure.

The main reason cited for the supposed resignations was the unhappiness over the recent changes in the management hierarchy. Two weeks ago, Wipro announced a realignment of its management structure, under which Girish Paranjpe and Suresh Vaswani were appointed as joint CEOs, with Mr Vaswani heading the infotech, BPO and enterprise division and Mr Paranjpe heading the telecom and BFSI businesses.

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Quick quiz: Which company is more “American”—Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services, or Armonk (N.Y.)-based IBM (IBM)? Evaluate the two based on where they make their sales, and the answer is surprising. TCS, India’s largest tech-services company, collected 51% of its revenues in North America last quarter, while 65% of IBM’s were overseas.

This juxtaposition helps explain investor reaction to the companies’ most recent earnings reports. TCS stock declined by more than 10% on Apr. 21 after it reported that earnings for its fourth fiscal quarter fell short of expectations. IBM, by contrast, beat estimates on Apr. 16. Its stock is up 3% since then and 25% since mid-February.

“No Slackening of Demand”
A tale of two strategies is playing out amid shifting global economic conditions. TCS, like the other top Indian tech-services outfits, has long focused on big American and British corporations. Now that the U.S. is slipping into a recession, the Indian companies are vulnerable. TCS, though, insists its financial shortfall doesn’t signal a fundamental weakness. It says a handful of U.S. clients canceled expansion plans in the fourth quarter, and the company agreed to defer payments by two big customers. “There’s no slackening of demand,” says N. Chandrasekaran, the company’s chief operating officer. “The pipeline is good. We just had some specific situations.”

IBM’s strong results stem from a strategy of diversifying into emerging markets by its services business, which represents about half of overall revenues. Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge says IBM has a two-track approach: In the U.S., where clients are economizing, it helps them cut costs, while in emerging markets, it helps customers build out their technology infrastructure.

In India, where IBM is now the No. 1 seller of technology services, its revenues grew 41% last quarter.”Our success starts with how global we are, which is intentional,” says Virginia M. Rometty, who runs global business services for IBM.

IBM and Accenture: Setting the Bar?
TCS is the most geographically diversified of the top Indian tech-?services companies. Others rely on the U.S. for 60% to 70% of sales, and all are scrambling to broaden their business. TCS, which last year set up a unit targeting emerging markets, saw revenues increase 40% there in the past fiscal year. Infosys Technologies (INFY), India’s No. 2 services player, on Apr. 15 warned that it might face a slowdown in demand. It, too, has launched an initiative aimed at China, India, Latin America, and the Middle East. Kris Gopalakrishnan, the company’s chief executive, cautions that Infosys is playing catch-up with the likes of IBM and Accenture (ACN). “It will take three years to make a significant difference to our revenues,” he says.

Meanwhile, the Indian companies aren’t in a terrible spot; after all, their services are designed to help clients simplify their businesses and save money. Until the U.S. economy pulls out of the doldrums, though, they will have to sell more aggressively and plan carefully so they don’t end up with too many employees, which would pinch margins.

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The GSC would service local and international customers, according to director and vice president for Asia Pacific, Middle East, India and Africa, Virender Aggarwal.

“Our Malaysian operations will be focusing on large companies and banks,” he told StarBiz via a conference call from Singapore to Hyderabad last week

Virender did not disclose the potential customers Satyam was targeting.

Launched last September, the GSC currently employs about 500 staff, mostly Malaysians.

Virender said Satyam would continue to recruit more local talents for its GSC.

“We have about 350 Malaysian engineers now and recruiting will continue into next year,” he said.

Virender oversees Satyam’s operations in the part of the region classified as “Rest of the World” (ROW), which includes Asia Pacific.

ROW contributes almost 20% to Satyam’s overall revenue. Just over 60% and 20% come from its US and European operations respectively.

According to Virender, Satyam’s Malaysian operations currently account for about 2% of ROW’s contribution.

“Contribution from Malaysia is relatively small. But to us Malaysia is a place to get work done and not necessarily a place to make a big amount of money,” he said.

The GSC serves Satyam’s Asean, Middle Eastern and American customers.

“We are also looking at doing more business processing outsourcing work because our Malaysian operations are involved in mainly IT work now,” Virender said.

He also said Malaysia had good economic growth and was cost effective to conduct business compared with the neighbouring countries.

“We are definitely looking to push more work into Malaysia,” Virender said.

Satyam, meanwhile, hit a milestone when it recorded revenue of US$2.13bil for the financial year ended March 31. Its revenue grew 46.3% while net profit surged 39.7% to US$417mil compared with US$298mil previously.

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Inaugurating a one-day workshop organised jointly by the Electronics Industries Association of India (ELCINA) and the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) here, he said that the State Government was planning to extend all the concessions available to the IT industry to the electronics hardware industry as well, such as special power tariffs, exemption from stamp duty and registration fees for all units established in IT hardware parks.

IT hardware units established in Kerala will also be entitled to a 10 per cent price preference in IT hardware procured by the Kerala Government, government bodies and other PSUs, he told the 100-odd participants from the industry at the workshop.

The workshop was meant to provide more information to the participants about the State as one of the best emerging destinations for electronics industry in India.

Growth potential

“The Indian market for electronics is expected to grow to $320 billion by 2015 and there is a potential for the Indian domestic hardware manufacturing industry also to grow to $155 billion in 2015,” Mr Jainder Singh, Secretary IT, Government of India, said.

He pointed out that electronics manufacturing has the potential to generate employment for even low skilled people left out of the opportunities in software development. The Government of India has over the last few years has taken a number of measures to promote the growth electronics/IT hardware manufacturing industry. As a result, the hardware manufacturing industry in India is at a take-off stage.

He also explained the new policy of the Government for establishing IT Investment Regions. IT Investment Regions could contain SEZ within them. Both the State and Centre will provide necessary infrastructure in the areas where they have basic responsibilities.

Mr Jainder Sigh said that as a result of the Government of India decision to provide investment subsidy of 20-25 per cent to IT hardware units, the Government has secured investment proposals totaling Rs 62,000 crore.

While hailing the support extended by the government, the availability of skilled manpower and conducive environment prevailing in the State, the industry participants suggested that the government should also help in setting up some technology business incubators, extend VAT concessions for the electronics industry, make available more trained personnel from ITIs, create physical infrastructure and exclusive industrial parks.

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The global IT consulting and services provider has sought 25 acres from the state government. Likely to be commissioned within two years, the ODC would generate employment for over 3,000 professionals in the state over a period of five years.

“We have applied for a 25-acre land in Gandhinagar and are likely to receive an approval from the government soon Initially, We plan to invest over Rs 60 crore for the project and later raise the corpus according to requirements,” said Captain H R Prasad, global head (corporate services) for Satyam Computers Limited.

Apart from providing customised IT solutions, consulting and designing for existing clients from the ODC at Gandhinagar, the company is also looking to expand its clientele.

Through its Satyam development centres in countries like India, US, UK, Canada, Japan and Australia, the company serves over 654 global companies.

In the near future, the company is also looking to expand its service base, added Prasad.

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